After logging in, the first screen you will see is your Tracker Home Page. By default, this page has two reports, which display the records assigned to you and the records reported by you. Also present on the Home Page is a link to the personal preferences section, where you can customize various user settings, such as changing your password and selecting date and report settings. A link to edit your account information may also be displayed depending on the privileges granted to you by your system administrator.

Report Layout

You can customize the columns of the reports displayed on your home page either by creating your own saved report layout or selecting an existing saved report layout. Please refer to the section Using Saved Queries & Reports for details.

Report Query

You can customize the query "Assigned To Me" with a query of your choice by defining your own personal saved or advanced query and selecting it for the First Home Page Report field in the Personal Preferences page. Alternatively, you can select an existing saved or advanced query for this first home page report as well. You can customize the query "Reported By Me" using the Second Home Page Report field in the Personal Preferences page. Information on selecting the queries for the Home Page reports via the Personal Preferences page is described in the section below. Please refer to the section Using Saved Queries & Reports for details on how to create your own saved query or refer to the section Advanced Queries for information on creating advanced queries.

Dynamic Report Selection

You can view different saved queries or charts on the Home page at any time by clicking on the pulldown menu above each report. Any saved query or chart to which you have access will be displayed in the pulldown for selection. To permanently change the reports displayed on the Home Page when you first log into Tracker, you will need to select the desired reports in the Preferences section.

Dynamic Report Searching

You can perform a text search within the query results on a Home Page report. For example, you may wish to find all the records in the query results that have "database" in the Title field as shown in the sample below.

To search within the query results:

1. Enter a key word(s) or phrase into the Search... text box at the top of the report
2. If desired, click on the dropdown icon to select in which fields you wish to search. Selecting "<All>" will search the available fields for the key word(s) or phrase entered (this is the default selection). Or, choose specific fields to be searched. You can select multiple fields by holding down the Ctrl button on your keyboard as you make your selections. Date and Link type fields are not available for selection. If you wish to find a subset of the query results based on a Date field, you can use the range filtering option.

   When searching for a specific PRN, you must enter the full PRN including the short name, if applicable. For example, if you are trying to find the ticket SUP20, entering only "20" will not return this record. You must enter "SUP20" into the Search text box.

   When choosing a Release Number field to search within, the value you enter into the Search text box will be searched within each individual digit of the Release Number field. For example, you can search using values like "1", "Beta 2", etc. Basically, you can search for the items that are configured as choices in the Release Number field. However, you cannot search for a combination of multiple digits at once. For example, if you enter "1.2" into the Search text box in an attempt to find records that have values like "1.2.0.None", "1.2.0.Beta 1", "1.2.1.-", you will get 0 matches because it will search for the value "1.2" within each individual digit of the Release Number.

   You can choose one of the available search methods: "Any Word" (default selection), "All Words", "Exact Phrase", "Boolean Expression". An explanation of each of these methods is available in the Full Text Search section of the Query Page.

3. Click on the Search icon to run the search. Any matches will be displayed.

You can click on the remove icon to remove the search criteria and reset to the defaults (no key word(s) or phrase in Search text box, "<All>" selected, Search method is "Any Word"). This will display the original set of query results.

If you choose to run another search while a subset of the query results is displayed, the new search will be done against the entire set of original query results. For example, if a query returns 12 matches and you run a text search that returns 5 matches. If you run another search while those 5 matches are displayed, the new search will search against the original 12 matches (not only within the 5 that matched your last search).

If you have applied any filters, the excluded items will not be included in the results of any searches done within the query results.

Dynamic Report Range Filtering

Range Filters can be applied to show a subset of the query results. Range Filters are available for Date, Floating Point and Integer type fields. For example, you may wish to see records that fall into a certain date range. Or, you may wish to see records that have a value greater than or less than a certain value in Floating Point or Integer fields. In the sample below, a filter is being applied to show only those records with "Date Reported" within the previous week.

To apply a filter:

1. Click on the empty filter icon next to the field name in the column heading
2. For Date fields, you can specify a date or a date range in the "on or after" and "and before" fields. A date can be typed in or you can click on the calendar icon to select a specific date. Or, you can select a date relative to the current date and time using the "within the" option.

   For Floating point and Integer fields, you can select one of the conditions (<, <=, >, >= and =) and enter a value. You can also specify a range by selecting another condition and entering a value in the "and" option.

3. Click on the Apply Filter button. The query results will be refreshed to display the items that matched the filter conditions.

1. Click on the full filter icon next to the field name in the column heading
2. Click on the Remove Filter button. The query results will be refreshed to reflect the removal of the filter.

Dynamic Sorting of the Results

The initial sort order of reports on the Home Page is based on the selections made in the Sort By options in the saved query. You can change the way the reports on the Home page are sorted at any time by clicking on the field name. The field that is being used as the primary sort field will have an arrow to the right of the field name. If the arrow is pointing down, the results are sorted by that field in a descending order. If the arrow is pointing up, the results are sorted by that field in an ascending order. Clicking once on the field with the arrow will reverse the sort order. Clicking once on any field that does not have the arrow will sort the results in ascending order by that field. Any field except TextArea type fields can be clicked to sort the results by that field. Please note that when the preference Exclude Time From Reports is enabled and a Date field is selected in the Sort By section of the saved query, the report results will be sorted by the time in each record even though the report will not display the time information. When PRN (Record ID) is selected for one of the Sort By fields, the records will be ordered according to the numeric component of the PRN (Record ID) field. The short name of the form will not be used as part of the sorting when PRN (Record ID) is selected. For example, let's say you have PRNs "REC1" and "REC2". The sorting will be done using "1" and "2", ignoring the "REC".

Other Features of the Home Page

When the Assigned To or Reported By fields are displayed as columns on a Home Page report, the user's name will appear as a clickable link if you have the appropriate privilege. Click on the user's name to display the user's profile information as shown below.

There is one Export link for each report displayed on the Home Page. The records displayed in each of the Home Page reports can be exported to a CSV file (comma separated values format) by clicking on the Export link to the right of the Report Pulldown at the top of the report. You can then open this file with another tool such as Microsoft Excel. Please note that when the preference Exclude Time From Reports is enabled and a Date field is displayed in the report layout, the time information will not be included (only the date) when exporting the Home Page reports.

If you have exported Metric (chart) data, you can create a chart in Microsoft Excel from the exported data by doing the following. Open the file in Excel and "rubber band" (left-click mouse and drag a rectangle around) the data plus column and row titles (exclude rows 1 through 3, but include the individual row/column titles in row 4 and column A along with the data in your selection) and click the Chart Wizard icon (or select Insert->Chart...). Click the Finish button in the Chart Wizard to accept the Microsoft Excel default settings for the chart; or make selections, click Next button, then click Finish to create a chart with custom settings. Please review the Microsoft Excel Help for further information on Excel charts.

To print the results of a report or chart displayed on the Home Page, click on the Print link to the right of the Report Pulldown at the top of each Home Page Report. When a report is displayed on the Home Page, clicking on the Print link will print all of the records that match the Saved Query (including those records not shown on the Home Page when the number of records in the query results exceeds the maximum number of records displayed per page). Please note that when the preference Exclude Time From Reports is enabled and a Date field is displayed in the report layout, the time information will not be included (only the date) when printing the Home Page reports.

User Privileges

When you log in, you are given access to data and operations as assigned by your Tracker administrator. These rights are assigned to you via User Groups. Each group defines a set of privileges, and you are assigned to groups. The total set of privileges you have is the sum of all of the rights for all of the User Groups in which you are a member.

Please contact your Tracker administrator if you wish to receive additional privileges.